1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for managing the use of electricity, and, more particularly, to methods for managing the use of electricity by consumers wherein the methods may be at least partially based on values the consumers place on the electricity usage.
2. Description of the Related Art
The price and consumption of energy throughout the world has been increasing dramatically over recent years and is expected to continue along this trend in the years to come. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Energy Annual Energy Outlook, total residential energy consumption is expected to increase by approximately twenty percent from 2007 to 2030 despite efficiency improvements. This is attributed to a number of factors including a projected twenty-four percent increase in the number of households and an approximately seven percent increase in the share of electricity attributed to “other” appliances such as home electronics. Increases in residential electricity consumption are accompanied by a projected 1.4 percent increase per year in commercial electricity consumption. Given these figures, and the fact that residential and commercial buildings comprise the largest energy consumer segment in the U.S., accounting for seventy-two percent of U.S. electricity consumption and forty percent of all energy use in the U.S., the recent push for technological solutions that increase energy awareness and efficiency are of no surprise.
The smart electric grid has been a vision for quite some time now, and rising energy prices and climate change have recently strengthened the urgency of this topic. Mandated by the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is stewarding the development of a standards framework to accelerate the deployment of the smart grid. Buildings constitute a key part of the smart grid picture on the demand side; residential and commercial buildings comprise the largest energy consumer segment in the United States. Together, residential and commercial buildings account for 40% of all energy use in the U.S. Buildings account for 72% of U.S. electricity consumption and 36% of natural gas consumption. Without action, U.S. energy consumption is projected to grow about 25% over the next two decades, and buildings are expected to play a large part in that growth.
To address the above problems, electric power systems around the globe are faced with needs for fundamental changes, which have brought about the concept of smart grids. The ongoing changes of the system have called for demand to become smarter as well in ways that comply better with the volatility of the supply side arising from increased penetration of intermittent and distributed resources. The curtailment of the peak demands has also become important to reduce the needs for additional electricity generation capacity. Driven by government mandated spending, there are huge commercial initiatives to deploy Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and other technologies for the smart grid. Current smart grid standardization activities are attempting to address the issues of protocols and information models needed to enable decision making throughout the grid. These protocols need to bring values captured from the smart grid technologies to the complete ecosystem, i.e., customers, Load Serving Entities (LSEs), utilities, and society as a whole.
Until very recently, there has been an active skepticism concerning benefits from retail competition. To the contrary, many years ago a vision was put forward that if all customers, small and large, responded to the changing system conditions locally, the system would in a homeostatic way keep itself in a healthy sustainable equilibrium. A concept was put forward that the law of large numbers will result in significant economic savings provided even the smallest users respond. These concepts have never materialized for a variety of reasons, perhaps the key reason being a lack of adequate incentives to encourage users to respond.
The past decade has seen a revival of electricity customer choice. Most recently, it has become accepted that active demand side response might be the key to overall energy efficiency and sustainability. The role of timely demand side response has become even more recognized as large-scale penetration of intermittent electricity generation is planned. Consequently, there has been significant research on thermal modeling of buildings, non-intrusive load monitoring, economic characterization of demand response, and the like. There have been renewed efforts to serve large customers efficiently. However, hardly any frameworks have attempted to systematically integrate large-scale responses from, and preferences of, the individual building users in residential and commercial buildings. It is also known for buildings including residential, commercial and public buildings to make use of distributed generation in order to provide at least a portion of the electricity that they consume. Distributed generation, which is also referred to as distributed energy, decentralized energy, decentralized generation, embedded generation, dispersed generation or on-site generation, involves the generation of electricity from many small energy sources. Such small energy sources may include renewable energy sources such as sunlight, wind and geothermal, but may also include non-renewable energy sources such as natural gas or propane powered generators. Distributed generation systems are small-scale electricity generators (typically in the range of 3 kW to 10,000 kW) used to provide an alternative to or an enhancement of the traditional electric power system.
Distributed generation may reduce the amount of energy lost in transmitting electricity because the electricity is generated very near the location where the electricity is used, perhaps even in the same building. Thus, the size and number of power lines that must be constructed in also reduced. Distributed generation systems may include technologies including combined heat power (CHP) and photovoltaic (PV) systems.
Combined heat power (CHP), which is also referred to as cogeneration, may include the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat. In addition to small-scale natural gas or propane powered generators for residential use, cogeneration plants are commonly utilized in district heating systems of hospitals, prisons, and industrial facilities with large heating needs. CHP may include natural gas or propane powered electricity generators that are disposed in the basement of a residence. Such generators may typically be used to provide electricity primarily during time periods of peak demand, when the cost of electricity may be the highest. In addition to the electricity produced by these generators, excess heat produced by these generators may be used in space heating within the same residence.
Photovoltaics (PV) is a method of generating electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaic power generation may employ solar panels comprising a number of cells containing photovoltaic material. In contrast to the CHP generators described above, solar panels are used, and may only be used, whenever the sun is shining.
What is neither disclosed nor suggested in the art is a system and method for managing the use and generation of electricity by consumers that takes advantage of voluntary behaviors and preferences of the consumers.